New ways to engage customers in co-designing your company's future - a weblog to complement the book, Outside Innovation, by Patty Seybold

Description

What is Outside Innovation?

It’s when customers lead the design of your business processes, products, services, and business models. It’s when customers roll up their sleeves to co-design their products and your business. It’s when customers attract other customers to build a vital customer-centric ecosystem around your products and services.
The good news is that customer-led innovation is one of the most predictably successful innovation processes.
The bad news is that many managers and executives don’t yet believe in it. Today, that’s their loss. Ultimately, it may be their downfall.

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LEAD USERS

Eric von Hippel coined the term "lead users" to describe a group of both customers and non-customers who are passionate about getting certain things accomplished. They may not know or care about the products or services you offer. But they do care about their project or need. Lead users have already explored innovative ways to get things done. They're usually willing to share their approaches with others.

LEAD CUSTOMERS

I use the term "lead customers" to describe the small percentage of your current customers who are truly innovative. These may not be your most vocal customers, your most profitable customers, or your largest customers. But they are the customers who care deeply about the way in which your products or services could help them achieve something they care about.

LEAD CUSTOMERS AND LEAD USERS

We’ve spent the last 25 years identifying, interviewing, selecting, and grouping customers together to participate in our Customer Scenario® Mapping sessions. Over the years, we’ve learned how to identify the people who will contribute the most to a customer co-design session. These are the same kinds of people you should be recruiting when you set out to harness customer-led innovation.

HOW DO YOU WIN IN INNOVATION?

You no longer win by having the smartest engineers and scientists; you win by having the smartest customers!

CUSTOMER CO-DESIGN

In more than 25 years of business strategy consulting, we’ve found that customer co-design is a woefully under-used capability.

Integrated Development

July 24, 2014

As I mentioned last week, in my post, “Enterprise Customers Forged the Apple/IBM Ecosystem,” what tickled me about the exclusive worldwide partnership announced by IBM and Apple on 7/15/14 was that it was a great example of IBM’s running around in front of the customer parade. Enterprise customers—led by their CEOs, sales execs, and top-earning rainmakers—had already voted with their proverbial feet and adopted Apple iPads and iPhones as their devices of choice for getting work done on the go. That meant that their IT organizations had to adapt by accommodating Apple devices and apps, and they did. Soon, an entire ecosystem of third-party tools and services sprang up to help enterprise IT professionals manage iDevices, support them, develop apps for them, and deliver back-end enterprise data and applications securely to employees. Apple helped primarily by getting out of the way. That evolution began four years ago, shortly after the introduction of the iPad. Apple supported these activities with its iOS Developer Enterprise Program, which allowed corporations to develop apps for their own institutional use and not have to publish them in the Apple App Store.

Now, IBM has made a dramatic entrance into this ecosystem—with four offerings specifically targeted for their many enterprise accounts: IBM MobileFirst for iOS, IBM MobileFirst Platforms for iOS, AppleCare for Enterprise, and MobileFirst supply and management. The first two offerings are targeted for application developers and are iOS-specific instantiations of IBM’s MobileFirst offerings, which we described in IBM’s MobileFirst “Customer Cloud” Strategy, in late March. Essentially, this is a cloud-based development platform that is designed to help enterprise app developers develop, deploy, secure, and integrate corporate apps into their (IBM and other ERP) back-end systems and services. IBM has developed 100+ starter kit apps for over 10 vertical industries.

July 01, 2011

Apple’s iCloud service won’t formally debut until the Fall of 2011, yet it has attracted many criticisms. We think that Apple’s iCloud actually raises the customer experience bar, yet again. With iCloud, Apple is redefining the experience of mobile offline and online computing by automagically synching and backing up all of your applications, files, and preferences across devices. If you lose your phone or your computer dies, you’ll be able to restore everything to exactly the way it was before. If you take a picture on one device, it will magically appear in your photo library on all your other devices. If you are working on a document or a spreadsheet on your iPad, it will magically appear with your cursor in the same spot on your MacBook. And, if you don’t have connectivity, you can keep on working, using your applications, and enjoying your music, etc. until you’re able to re-synch.

Apple uses its “cloud” service with tight integration into its operating systems to deliver this seamless peripatetic computing experience. Application developers who want their applications to conform to that experience will need to write to a new set of application programming interfaces (APIs). If developers want their applications to behave consistently across other operating system platforms and ecosystems (e.g., Windows, RIM, Android, and so on), they’ll need to do more work in order to provide an equivalent cross-platform seamless experience.

Today, there are a number of applications that work really well across platforms (RIM Blackberry, iPad, Mac, PC, Android, etc.), such as Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader, Evernote for capturing, tagging, and annotating information, and, of course, almost all Web-based apps, like Facebook, Gmail, Google apps, and so on. They all manage to deliver good synchronization across mobile apps and across platforms.

The gauntlet that Apple is throwing down with its seamless online/offline/mobile experience brought to you via iCloud is to provide a single environment that keeps all your applications, data, and preferences synched up. That’s going to be a tough act to follow.

December 18, 2010

Just got the most recent printed copies of my latest oeuvre: It Takes a Child to Raise a Village. I really like the way they turned out! Tikatokdid a great job of producing them for me! I've spent a happy morning shipping out copies to all who ordered copies for the holidays! It's not too late!

How did this book come to be? I spent a week on campus with these girls 11-18 years old. I had 45 minutes with each class (it was the middle of their exam period!). I asked them to write short essays and/or draw pictures about their "Back Home Projects." I handed out color sharpies for the drawings. They worked in class while I egged them on. Then, I disappeared for 6 months. Came back in October with copies of the finished book. The girls were blown away!! They didn't think I really would DO anything with their work!

We held a school assembly where they told their stories on video (coming soon!). And sent them home (not a simple thing, when you live miles away on dirt roads!) with permission slips for their parents/guardians to sign, so that we could publish their photos as well as their writing and artwork.

They are so PROUD of this book! I am so proud of them! These girls are truly transforming the lives of the people in their villages. They are the future hope of Africa!

April 26, 2010

Last week, Apple did something that created outrage among
educators and parents—one of their most important customer
segments.

Apple banned the use of a $3.95 iPhone app called Scratch
Viewer. Scratch Viewer would have let teachers, parents, and
young kids view the 1 million applications that young kids all
over the globe have created over the last three years using
Scratch.

Scratch is a kid-friendly free programming environment which was
developed at the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media
Lab, based on the work of Seymour Papert and Alan Kay. Mitchel
Resnick, the director of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT,
had this to say to reporters and on the Scratch blog:

“We're disappointed that Apple decided not to allow a Scratch
player on the iPhone or iPad (as part of Apple's policy against
apps that interpret or execute code). As we see it, there is
nothing more important than empowering the next generation of kids
to design, create, and express themselves with new media
technologies. That's the idea behind Scratch. Kids around the world
are using Scratch to program their own interactive stories, games,
animations, and simulations with Scratch—and sharing their creations
with one another online. In the process, kids learn to think
creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively. Since
the launch of Scratch in 2007, kids have shared nearly 1 million
projects on the Scratch
website. We hope that Apple will reconsider its policies
so that more kids can experience the joys of creating and sharing
with Scratch. (By the way, the Scratch player for the iPhone was
created by a third party, not by our group at the MIT Media Lab.
But our group is planning to make Scratch authoring tools for the
iPad in the future, and we hope Apple will allow us....)”

Faithful Outside Innovation followers will recognize
Mitch Resnick as one of the heroes in the LEGO
Mindstorms’ NXT story. Mitch has been engaging kids as
co-inventors at MIT since the early 1980s. He and Steve Ocko were
the grad students who connected computers to LEGOs so that young
kids could use Seymour Papert’s LOGO language to make their LEGO
creations come alive.

September 10, 2009

Sanyu Provia’s description of her experience as a student at the
URDT Girls’ School in rural, western Uganda. Sanyu’s
schoolmates are girls from the ages of 12 to 18 years old, who come
from low income rural families. Sanyu applied to be admitted to the
boarding school, did well on the interview, and has been not only
receiving an education in the 3R’s, but also in sanitation, nutrition,
organic farming, carpentry, solar technology and visionary leadership.
While in school, she has helped her family improve their income. She
describes how this works:

"· The backhome projects have helped to increase our income. Our
family got involved in sugar cane growing and out this we were able to
buy a motorcycle (TVS); thanks to URDT.

· Backhome projects have improved our sanitation and health
standards through improvements on our house, constructing a good drying
rack, and a good birth room.

· We as family members we have managed to get school fees for our
sisters who are in secondary schools to proceed with their education.

· Back home projects have helped my family to improve on nutrition,
which has been done through planting different vegetable gardens and
rearing some animals like pigs and goats.

· They have helped me to improve on the co-operation in family through working together to earn a living as a family.

· Back Home projects have helped me to increase on the relationships
with our neighbours. This has been done through sharing with them what
we have as they also get attracted and take these seeds to their families to plant them.

· I have also realized that the back home projects have helped me to
have a shared vision with my family members. This is through bringing
my suggestion towards our family as they agree after talking about it."

September 08, 2009

Here’s an example of 12-to 18 year old girls in Uganda who are
increasing their families’ income through their schools’ projects. Most
families expect kids to become productive members of society AFTER they
graduate from school. At the Uganda Rural Development and Training
(URDT) Programme’s Girls’ School, 240 girls increase their families’
incomes every year by training, organizing and inspiring their family
members. Here’s one of their stories:

Namata Eva, a student at the URDT (URDT.net) Girls’ School, has
witnessed changes at her home because of sustainable income- generating
Back Home Project and she had this to share:

“Back Home projects are series of activities we do at home as we
have learnt them at school. They are family projects because every
member has a role to play in implementing these projects.

Earlier, our family back home projects were growing pineapples,
sugar canes, beans, maize and other traditional crops. However, in
2007/2008 we were introduced to organic farming for income generation
with a specific focus on Sesame and chillies. Our family chose to grow
Sesame but did not abandon the pineapples.

Through back home projects, we have built a permanent house and can
afford to save at least four thousand (4,000) per month through a
revolving SACCO fund. We make other savings, pay school fees for other
children in the family, and provide them with the necessary school
requirement – this was not the case before I joined the URDT Girls
school. The family is now proud of this saving culture because we meet
all our needs without straining so much.

Through back home projects, we can afford a balanced diet because we
grow a variety of crops including vegetables. Before these trainings,
we used to depend on cassava as our daily meal. In brief I can say that
the back home projects have become a backbone of our rural livelihood”.

September 03, 2009

by Susan Warshauer, Vice Chancellor of the African Rural University (at Uganda Rural Development and Training) -- submitted (#405) to Nicholas Kristof's "Half the Sky" contest.

I
look up and Odembos, the Human Rights Officer at URDT, is standing in
my office door. After a few minutes of chatting, Odembos explains that
he has a sad story to tell me. He hands me a photo of a very little
girl talking into the microphone at KKCR, the community radio station
run by URDT. He tells me she is 8 years old; she looks about 5 or 6.

Apparently,
the little girl’s Mother moved away and her Father began abusing her.
Although her Father said he would kill her if she told anyone, she told
her Aunt. Her Aunt began treating the injuries she sustained from the
abuse but would do nothing about stopping it. Finally, this tiny,
little girl went to the church in her village. She sat still and waited
until everyone finished praying, then told them she wanted to see the
Human Rights Officer she had heard on the radio. She said she needed
his help and explained what was happening. The good people at her
church raised the money necessary to transport her to URDT. While they
were making the arrangements, the little girl’s Father came looking for
her. The members of the church told him that she was at URDT already.

When
the little girl got to URDT she told her whole story to Odembos. He
worked with her over several days, getting her lodging and food in the
URDT Girls’ School. Odembos kept reassuring her that she was now safe.
He went to the police, they investigated, and the Aunt and others from
the village came forward. There was more than enough evidence to arrest
the man.

The photograph Odembos had just handed me was taken when
the little girl decided she would go on the radio to talk about what
had happened to her so other children would know that they too could
get help from URDT.

For
more than 20 years, Uganda Rural Development and Training Programme
(URDT) has helped people in rural, western Uganda create better lives
for themselves. Besides KKCR, which has over 2 million listeners, and
the Human Rights Office, URDT offers many other services. There are
primary and secondary schools for girls that use a two-generation
approach involving the students’ families in training and back-home
projects. URDT runs a Technical Institute for young men and women
helping them create jobs for themselves and others, a Land Rights
Office, an HIV/Aids Programme, a demonstration organic farm and farmer
training, and African Rural University (ARU) for women, focused on
creating Rural Transformation Specialists, where I work. http://www.urdt.net

August 18, 2009

Great story by Matt Clark in the Christian Science Monitor on July 5, 2009 about "my"
African Rural University for Women (ARU) in Uganda with wonderful photos by Mary Knox Merrill.

Here, Charlotte Mbaine, who just completed her third year at the
University, is being thanked by one of the women in the Village where
she did her "senior project"-- spending one month helping villagers
articulate their Visions and begin to achieve them by discovering and
using their own resources and talents. Check out the full story and
video African Academy Empowers Youths.

Photo: Mary Knox Merrill, Christian Science Monitor

I'll be heading back to Uganda for a visit with these recent grads in early November. These young women went to ARU to become rural Community Transformation Specialists, rather than to head to Kampala to work in business. They are raising the economic productivity of each village they work with. We are seeking funding to provide them with paid internships, laptops, Internet access, cell phone minutes, and solar energy starter kits. They come to each village with knowledge of local agricultural techniques, brick-making, sanitation, road-building, and visionary leadership. They inspire the villagers to articulate their own visions, to pool their talents and resources and to achieve their visions. Read more about this innovative program for customer-led innovation.

August 14, 2009

Intersecting waves of technology are converging: Cloud computing, massive parallel processing, distributed file systems like Hadoop, dynamic provisioning to the cloud, embedded computing, open mobile platforms and APIs, and semantic publishing,
to cite just a few. Patty’s Pioneers (technology architects) have been
talking recently about how these phenomena will profoundly change the
way we do business, use computers and address problems. We already have
the ability to send huge volumes of information to the compute cloud to
perform long-running, compute-intensive pattern detection. Google works
that way. The genome project and many other scientific endeavors are
enabled by this capability. You can solve BIG problems. You can offload
bursty, compute-intensive applications. You can enable new capabilities
like high-frequency trading.

Information, data
types, and file formats are changing too. Scientific and technical data
isn’t always organized in relational databases or spreadsheets. There
are huge flat files, analog files, arrays, sequences, 3D models, and a
myriad of data types and patterns that most business IT was never
designed to address. We are sensing and detecting real-time changes in
everything from weather to ocean pH. We perform chemical analyses,
create molecular models, and find interrelationships among everything.
We have massive amounts of genetic sequence data, with genome browsers,
model organism databases, molecule- or process-specific databases.

Information that we want to share and have customers find and use is
increasingly being tagged to accelerate semantic processing. Many of
Patty’s Visionaries (customer-centric e-business leaders) have already
embarked on large semantic tagging projects. They are convinced that,
in their fields of endeavor, important concepts need to pop out of the
sea of words and data so that these concepts can be linked to the
appropriate behaviors and services. A company name came be linked to
news, financial data, personnel information, products, patents,
geography, partners, and customers. A chemical formula or a gene
sequence can be linked, viewed, and acted upon with a staggering array
of tools.

This next generation of distributed computing and pattern matching will
unleash a new economy – with new opportunities for value creation.

As I contemplate the tremendous and revolutionary changes that will hit
all of our businesses as a result of the new ways in which we can now
detect patterns and process information, I am grateful for the magic of
the human brain. Our intuition and emotions combine with our
sense-making and pattern matching to make magical leaps across
disciplines.

This next generation of computing architectures is upon us. It’s time
to take the plunge. Say goodbye to Microsoft Word, say hello to
N-dimensional arrays and patterns. Say goodbye to PDAs and laptops. Say
hello to holograms you can gesture through.

June 02, 2009

Last week I hosted two very rich customer gatherings: the semiannual meetings of my Pioneers’ and Visionaries’
groups. The tradition in these meetings is one of “show and
tell”—clients share what they’ve been working on and seek advice from
their peers. There are so many great “aha!s” that came out of both
meetings, I’ll be digesting and summarizing the take-aways over the
next several weeks.

“Documents” Have Become Interactive Landing Pages

Visionaries don’t present information in the form of flat online
documents or lock information up in PDFs (although they make it easy to
download and print PDFs). They provide actionable, interactive
information in small bite-size chunks. Their “Document 2.0’s” include
links to curated, authoritative, structured data, such as: